


Realisation

by PoppyAlexander



Series: Johnlock ficlets [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Compassionate Touch, Depersonalization, Derealization, Dissociation, M/M, Mental Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 10:02:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5371187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sherlock's mouth makes shapes and voice makes sounds and his hollow legs carry him to John's bed and his too-long-too-short arms reach out and his feather-filled hands pull back John's blankets."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Realisation

Sherlock had that sense again--not a feeling, it was precisely the opposite of a feeling--that sense of unreality, disconnectedness (but also as if he had never been connected to anything, ever, to begin with). Sometimes he could see himself: lying on the sofa, or sitting in his chair, or playing his violin. (Frequently in cabs; he couldn't remember the last time he'd ridden in a cab when he wasn't watching himself do so.) Not this time though. This was just the anxious, disconcerting sensation of Otherness that made him doubt he even existed.

He touched his face.

He'd had it off and on since childhood; too long with nothing to occupy him and he felt himself disappear. He would stare into a mirror and wonder what he was. He would lay his hand on his neck to feel his throbbing pulse and he was sure he was imagining it. He would think about other people and envy the fact that they were real and alive and present while he was just. . .not.

He stared at the palm of his hand.

John had gone to bed, but not long ago, and Sherlock knew the sounds and the subtle changes in the air that meant John was reading, checking his phone one last time for email or messages, turning his pillow over and over, sticking one leg out from under his blankets to rest atop them. John's light was out but he was awake. Not for long.

The only thing Sherlock could feel was a need to be made real. He was empty, disintegrated, shattered, hollow. He needed. . .

Up the steps, surprised that his ersatz feet make patting sounds on the treads as he goes. His incorporeal hand on the doorknob somehow turns it.

"Sherlock? What is it?"

John Watson is real. He is gravity. He is the earth.

Sherlock's mouth makes shapes and voice makes sounds and his hollow legs carry him to John's bed and his too-long-too-short arms reach out and his feather-filled hands pull back John's blankets.

"Please," begs his voice. "Please."

His faux body folds collapses delicately--a house of tissue-paper cards--onto the mattress.

"Sherlock, what--"

"John. Please." The side of Sherlock's body absorbs heat. "Please. . .please. . .please."

John's face is all shadow and curve; his eyes glint and dim, glint and dim, as he blinks.

Sherlock's brain sends a message thrice around the earth, to the moon and back, bouncing off every satellite along the way, and at last his face floats forward until it is pressed against John's neck, which is stubbly, dry, hot, smelling of sandalwood soap and sweat.

"Please. . ."

An arm slides around Sherlock's waist, ten million miles away from the place where he is pleading, begging, praying to be made human, to be pulled back through the membrane of unreality into the world of the living. The weight of the arm, the press of the hand against the small of his back turns those places they touch from vapour back to something solid. Skin over muscle, blood rushing through it, every bit in its place.

"Please, John."

It is all he can say. It is nothing like what he means to ask. It will have to do. If he can say it enough, say it right, John Watson will save him.

The other arm is under the side of his neck, the bend of a shoulder cradling his jaw, a danker, more animal scent there, beneath a chemical approximation of something outdoorsy. Sherlock inhales and his breath has mass and helps sink him deeper into the mattress, closer to the heat and hardness and softness of John's chest. Hip. Thigh. Ankle. Every bit of Sherlock that brushes against John integrates, settles, becomes comprehensible and familiar.

"Please please please."

Fingers in his hair, gently on his scalp. Dry, closed lips against his forehead, twin streams of damp exhaled breath from John's nostrils there, as well.

" _Shhh_ . . ." An almost kiss, a gentle hand petting him in a way that reminds him of a real boy he was once, the way his mother soothed him to sleep with a hand on the back of his neck.

"Please, John."

"Yes."

John is translating Sherlock back into his native language.

"Yes, Sherlock. _Shh_. Yes."

The arm at his waist shifts slightly upward, the hand at his back drawing him closer to the heat, the shape, the very real John Watson.

And then, at last, they aretwobodies entwined, in a bed, in a home, in the world.


End file.
